From the top of Africa
I will come back full-handed
My blue backpack a blessing
Black Moses returned
A dream become real

Lest I forget
I will dig my soil deep
I will speak my father’s tongue
I will sit on a woven mat
I will gobble a yellow plate
Of banana plantain
Mixed with mountain beans
Tender onions in palm oil
A mound of my mother’s food
Mount Kilimanjaro on my lap

*pole pole = slowly slowly

A year is born, new resolutions
Mine is one, huge and clear
Earth pulling down
Mind pushing uphill
A war with Newton’s laws

From the top of Africa
I will come back full-handed
My blue backpack a blessing
Black Moses returned
A dream become real

Lest I forget
I will dig my soil deep
I will speak my father’s tongue
I will sit on a woven mat
I will gobble a yellow plate
Of banana plantain
Mixed with mountain beans
Tender onions in palm oil
A mound of my mother’s food
Mount Kilimanjaro on my lap

Biography

Epiphanie Mukusano is originally from Rwanda where she used to be a teacher. She has a Master’s degree in English Literature and now lives as a refugee in Cape Town with her husband and children.

Her poems have been published in Living on the Fence (2007) a collection of writing by women who are refugees from various countries in Africa. Epiphanie contributed When a name is lost to the collection of birth stories Just keep breathing (Jacana, 2008) and Cambridge University Press has published her children’s story Shema and the goat (2009). Epiphanie’s poem comes from her first poetry collection Kilimanjaro on my lap.

Epiphanie Mukasano

Biography

Epiphanie Mukusano is originally from Rwanda where she used to be a teacher. She has a Master’s degree in English Literature and now lives as a refugee in Cape Town with her husband and children.

Her poems have been published in Living on the Fence (2007) a collection of writing by women who are refugees from various countries in Africa. Epiphanie contributed When a name is lost to the collection of birth stories Just keep breathing (Jacana, 2008) and Cambridge University Press has published her children’s story Shema and the goat (2009). Epiphanie’s poem comes from her first poetry collection Kilimanjaro on my lap.

From the top of Africa
I will come back full-handed
My blue backpack a blessing
Black Moses returned
A dream become real

Lest I forget
I will dig my soil deep
I will speak my father’s tongue
I will sit on a woven mat
I will gobble a yellow plate
Of banana plantain
Mixed with mountain beans
Tender onions in palm oil
A mound of my mother’s food
Mount Kilimanjaro on my lap

*pole pole = slowly slowly

A year is born, new resolutions
Mine is one, huge and clear
Earth pulling down
Mind pushing uphill
A war with Newton’s laws

From the top of Africa
I will come back full-handed
My blue backpack a blessing
Black Moses returned
A dream become real

Lest I forget
I will dig my soil deep
I will speak my father’s tongue
I will sit on a woven mat
I will gobble a yellow plate
Of banana plantain
Mixed with mountain beans
Tender onions in palm oil
A mound of my mother’s food
Mount Kilimanjaro on my lap